


The Braided Lights

by Ciara Blount (just)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dragons, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Reapers, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just/pseuds/Ciara%20Blount
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it's discovered that no one in the world has been born for months, a group of grim reapers investigate the reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my serial novel featuring magic and fireworks and backflips and words! With luck and dedication (and a heretofore dubious ability to concentrate), I'll post a new part every Monday.
> 
> I'm immeasurably grateful for the wisdom and encouragement of Athu, Millie, Eddie and Emma. Thank you all.
> 
> Enjoy!

A hand reaches out to save him and so he reaches back, closing his eyes against the blistering glare of fire. He manages to lock his fingers around a calloused hand and gasps. He can feel memories spilling out of his mind. He struggles to free himself, but he can’t break away.

The smallest memories fall the fastest—the pleasant scent of something, the odd shape of something else—in an instant, all of them are gone.

Smoke shreds the inside of his nose and claws down his throat, but he’s still aware enough to know there’s no ground underneath his feet and that he’ll die if he falls.

The larger memories are next to go. They fall clean away like stones one after the other. The feel of something precious. The sight of someone admired. The sound of something despised.

The hand wrenches him upward, painfully sharp and much too fast, and drags him across the ground away from the cliff’s edge. Memories spiral out of his grasp faster than he can recognize what he’s losing. He grimaces, his lungs squeezed. His mind feels cold and dark.

His last three memories, the ones he held on to tightest, fuse together like beads of water on the shell of his mind and drop as one. Something warm and familiar, revolting and new, bright and sad.

Losing them saps him of his energy. His mind flickers in and on and out. With what’s left of his strength, he pulls his hand free of gently grasping fingers, even though it’s too late. Everything, every sight and sensation and sound and joy, is gone.

A voice thick with guilt murmurs in his ear, “I’m sorry.”

When he closes his eyes, he yearns for a name he can’t find.

—

His name is Chance. He’s not sure if that’s the name his parents decided to go with or if it was a later development of some kind, but it’s definitely not something he would have chosen for himself. Optimistically, it could be a nickname, but he’s heard it from everyone who’s come to visit him so far and some of the voices he’s heard while pretending to be unconscious just don’t sound like voices that would use someone’s nickname instead of their actual name. He dwells on his disappointment for about an hour longer than he should just because it’s all he knows about himself. And, since he seems to be stuck in a hospital, he doesn’t have many other options for entertainment.

To make matters even less comfortable, one of the windows of his little room is open and letting in the thick, tangled scent of ocean salt and steamed rice. He feels ravenous, but some tiny evil elf in his head or stomach is flipping switches so that the aroma of food smells revolting to him. He could sleep, but he’s done that already for hours, and it only seems to make him feel even more exhausted. Any more naps today and he might start hallucinating.

Which could be fun, come to think of it.

Grumbling offensive sounds under his breath, Chance stretches and wraps a tight fist around the corner of his pillow, keeping his eyes stubbornly open. Based on his restlessness, he must not be a very still person normally. He picks at the seared, blackened skin on his chest and plays another round of Why Am I Burned with himself. Dragon, saving orphans from a fire, saving orphaned dragons from a fire they started…all plausible. He awards himself with another trip to the window.

Moving is a chore, and getting to the window takes a fair number of deep breaths as well as assistance from the wall, but at least he can move now. Earlier, he could hardly breathe without hurting himself, but over the hours, some kind of magic in the bandages has cooled the pain and smoothed his scorched skin. When he gets to the ledge, the smell of sweet duck lifts into his nose and sends his stomach churning. He opts to breathe through his mouth instead as he leans far out and looks at the city he spotted this morning on his first trip to the window. Countless buildings sit together in a thick huddle, gargantuan and golden in the afternoon sun. The hospital is so far removed from the city that the skyline looks more like a silent, shimmering painting than something real.

He feels a jolt of exhilaration. That enormous flat chute that curves around the city whose surface sways and glimmers—is it filled with water? Are those boats? What about that blue building shaped like an hourglass? Or the tiers upon tiers of open areas filled with stalls and venders and smoke and sparkling lights—what are those? Markets? It’s all absent of meaning for him, a foreign landscape that, for all he knows, might be his home. He could live in that hourglass building, or have family that work in that market. He scans every detail again hoping for a hint to surface in his head.

A burst of laughter fills the hallway, giving Chance a gut instinct to run. He hobbles back into bed, inventing curses to hiss through his teeth as he goes, and hides under the blanket.

The day’s millionth round of visitors let themselves into his room and drag two chairs noisily to either side of Chance’s bed. As they start a whispered conversation over him, Chance plays the How Do I Know You game.

A voice that weaves laughter into every word says, “Why is the blanket covering his face?”

Someone distinctly less amused says, “I thought he was dead when we walked in.”

The happy voice becomes a panicked one. “He’s not, is he? Chance? Chance!” Desperate hands grab hold of the blanket and Chance winces as it’s torn away. “Chance—!”

With the blanket gone, Chance dedicates more concentration to feigning unconsciousness.

“Ryoko, put it down!”

“I just wanted to check on him!”

“Stop that—you ancient nuisance, would you stop?”

Most of his visitors have gone to great lengths not to wake him. They ease into the room on soft feet, say a few quiet words of support, sniffle a little bit, and leave. These two, on the other hand—

“Give it! Giv’it! Givitgivitgivit!”

“Ayaka!”

Chance can’t help it—he peeks. Two women in kimono are engaged in a brutal tug-of-war over his blanket. Based on how elegantly they’re dressed and how savage they’re willing to be over a blanket, Chance assumes they’re sisters. The one on the right—the older one with long black hair and a cluster of wrinkles around her eyes—wins the tug-of-war and frees the blanket with a crow of triumph. Chance closes his eyes, struggling to make a peaceful expression, and swallows an indignant squawk when the fabric rakes across his face, covering him again.

“If he wants the blanket over his face, let him have it there,” the winner says, patting him on the forehead through the blanket. “Honestly, Ryoko. You could have woken him.”

“Our poor nephew.”

“He’ll be fine, and Morgan will be here soon.”

Chance takes a deep breath and almost opens his eyes. That name again. More than any other word today, he’s heard the name “Morgan” repeated over and over. “Where’s Morgan?” and “Is Morgan hurt?” and “Why isn’t Morgan here?”

Happy Aunt says, “He isn’t taking a water taxi, is he?”

“At this time of day, I hope he did,” Strong Aunt says. “The roads are jammed in every direction.”

“But it’ll take him the same amount of time traveling by boat as it would if he just took a car.”

“Then it doesn’t matter if he took a water taxi or not then, does it, Ryoko?”

There’s a creak from the floor as his aunts sit back down. For the first time since he woke up, Chance wants to talk to someone. If he does, though, he’ll have to tell them that in addition to the burns that cover his body, his memory is nothing but a deep blank space. Resigned to silence, Chance wiggles his toes and listens with half an ear to his aunts discussing the various reasons why Being Burnt Must Not Be Fun.

After a few minutes, a nurse arrives to politely boot his aunts out. Strong Aunt says, “You’re still here? Oh, sweet girl, how long is your shift?” While the nurse answers, Happy Aunt fishes Chance’s hand out from under the blanket and squeezes his fingers. Then Strong Aunt kisses his forehead through the blanket.

“See you at home, Chance,” one of them whispers.

As soon as the door’s shut behind them, Chance pushes the blanket away and, free of sweat-soaked linen, swallows as much fresh air as he can in one breath. With the arrival of night, the distant city lights reach soft fingers through the open window. Chance decides the visitor parade must be finished for the day and sits up, stretching his arms over his head and sighing as his spine straightens. Free at last.

Until the door’s hinges whine.

Using one of his recently-invented curses, Chance flattens himself against the bed, managing to elbow himself in the stomach in the process. Curiosity and the security of shadow, however, persuade him to keep his eyes open.

The boy who walks into the room has a jaw like a knife and a mouth that curls up naturally. Black hair, a yukata that looks expensive by the way the fabric falls, and bare feet. When the boy closes the door, Chance closes his eyes. He listens for the sound of footsteps crossing the floor, but he doesn’t hear a thing. A twinge develops in Chance’s trapped wrist, his hipbone digging in with brutal pressure.

He jerks his head as fingertips touch his forehead.

“Chance?”

He doesn’t say a word. Another long moment passes. The fingertips resting on his forehead trace down his cheek, fan out over his ear, and then comb through his hair. It’s a devastatingly gentle gesture that Chance is almost embarrassed to feel, since this person is a stranger to him.

The hand goes still and quickly withdraws. “Chance.” It sounds like the boy’s figured out Chance is awake. He also sounds a little panicked.

With a twinge of guilt, Chance opens his eyes. It occurs to him that he hasn’t made eye contact with anyone since he woke up, and under different circumstances it might feel nice to see someone looking back at him with familiarity, but the boy’s wounded expression makes Chance wish he’d kept his eyes closed.

The boy says his name again, the word small and afraid and lifting at the end like a question.

Chance says, “I don’t know,” without fully understanding why he knows what the boy is asking. “I just woke up and I don’t…remember anything.” When that doesn’t seem like enough, he adds, “I’m sorry.”

The boy looks away and slouches, his shoulders pulling inward. Chance feels a surge of guilt, but he knows he’d feel worse if he’d lied to him. To fill the silence and to make some small stride towards closing the gap between them, Chance blurts, “What is your name?” and instantly realizes that was a stupid thing to say.

In fact, it may be the _worst_ thing he could have said. The boy responds like he’s been hit, staring at Chance with wide and devastated eyes.

All at once, Chance remembers the name he’s heard from nearly every visitor who’s run in and out of his room all day. Morgan.

The boy’s face brightens. It’s a much more natural look for him. 

Chance licks his lips. “Is your name Morgan?” Something’s building in his chest, tight and momentous, every time he says the name.

The boy—Morgan—nods. He opens his mouth to speak and then seems to think better of it. The joy fades a little from his smile, leaving him looking more pained than anything. “You don’t remember me,” he says.

Chance thinks he made that clear, but he checks his impatience. It’s too early in his first conversation with someone to be impolite. “No,” he says. Then, once more, “I’m sorry.”

Morgan’s smile changes into something sad. It’s amazing how tiny each change is and how easily Chance can translate them. “You don’t have to apologize,” he says. “I’m happy enough that you’re alive.” He sits in Strong Aunt’s chair and gives the bandages wrapped around Chance’s chest a guilty stare.

“What happened to me?”

Morgan meets his gaze. “No one’s told you?” he asks, surprised.

“I spent the day, uh, hiding.” As it’s spoken, Chance marvels at how much sneakier and cooler it sounded in his head.

Morgan, at least, laughs. When he stops, his eyes are wet. “You’re exactly the same,” he says. That doesn’t answer Chance’s question, but he resists the urge to point it out. A heavy sense of quiet settles between them, but Morgan’s expression is withdrawn and focused, like he’s putting the story together. Chance waits, using the time to admire the open neck of Morgan’s yukata and the dark, almost black color of his eyes.

“I found you on a cliff,” Morgan says. “You’d been hiding from a dragon.”

Chance frowns. “Are you sure I wasn’t fighting it?” he asks hopefully.

“Unless you were using your bare hands…” Morgan says, tilting his head to one side doubtfully. “You were also lying in a cavern under a boulder.”

Chance sighs and embraces his disappointment in himself. “Go on,” he says sadly.

Morgan makes a sympathetic noise. “You managed to pass out in a brave position?”

Chance gives him a look.

“It looks like the doctors managed to heal most of the burns. When I brought you here last night, they didn’t think you’d make it.”

Chance waits for more, but Morgan seems to have finished. Even so, there’s a strange set to Morgan’s jaw and he can’t seem to sit still. It’s a clear indication that he isn’t telling the whole story by a long shot.

“What was on the cliff?” Chance asks.

Morgan lifts one shoulder. “Just the dragon.”

“So why was I up there?”

“You feed them sometimes. It’s not the safest thing to do but you seem to enjoy it.”

It occurs to Chance that this could be a lie. It then occurs to Chance that everything he’s said could be a lie.

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Morgan says. The sharpness in his voice is almost startling.

“How would I know if you did?” Chance counters, but he knows already he’s lost this round. He exhales, frustrated, and asks, “Why do I trust you?”

As Morgan starts to say, “You—” he cuts himself off and smiles—the widest one yet—at Chance’s hand.

There, inexplicably knotted around his finger, is a glistening red string.

“That’s why,” Morgan says.


	2. Chapter 2

Chance flexes his fingers and watches the string ripple like a strand of water. The knot looks small and tight, but he can’t feel even a hint of pressure on his finger. With wide eyes, he reaches out with his other hand and pinches the string to make sure it’s real. The sensation is entirely new. The string gives more than a real one would, but not enough for Chance’s fingers to pass through it.  
  
At his core, Chance starts to feel a slow burn, like his heart is clouding over. Something heavy settles over him, sapping his energy and filling him with lethargy. His rational mind tells him to let go of the string, that it’s causing him pain and therefore it has to be dangerous, but a stronger part of him persuades him to hold on.  
  
He grips the string and sucks in a breath of shock when a wall of sensation falls on top of him.  
  
Some are emotions, heavier than bricks of iron and impossible to pick apart and identify beyond a general sense of “overpowering.” With them is something dark and cold and heavy, and the weight of it all combined squeezes the breath out of him.  
  
Morgan shouts, “No!” sounding sharp and panicked. He seizes Chance’s hand just as something lodges in Chance’s throat and stops his breath. Weight slams against Chance’s lungs, brutal and unrelenting and _everywhere_.  
  
Then, right in the thick of it all, a sensation of warmth reaches for him like the touch of sunlight and somehow, Chance knows to hold on to the string in order to bring it closer. He hears Morgan bellowing something else, but it’s not important. The light is all that matters. It—  
  
Disappears.  
  
All of it. The light, the string, the pressure—it’s gone in an instant, leaving a raw, scraped feeling under Chance’s skin. His left hand is frozen in a fist around a string that isn’t there anymore. He shivers and looks up at Morgan. Judging by the pale, nervous pull of Morgan’s features, Chance didn’t do a smart thing just now.  
  
“Did I break it?” he asks, his voice hoarse.  
  
Morgan startles. He takes a tiny breath and holds it, but when he exhales, Chance can actually see the tension in his shoulders building rather than releasing. “No,” Morgan says. “You didn’t break it. You can’t.” He looks around the room with a hunted expression. “Chance—” He squeezes Chance’s hand hard enough to hurt. “I have to go.”  
  
“Go?” Chance yanks on his arm as he stands up. “No—what _was_ that? Where’s the string? What _is_ the string? Wait!”  
  
Morgan squeezes his fingers, then gently tugs his hand free. “I’ll come back,” he says, “I promise.” Despite the weight of sincerity in his voice, Chance doesn’t feel reassured, and the urge to follow him surges through his head like a powerful migraine.  
  
The farther Morgan walks away from him, the more the room begins to feel like a boarded up and forgotten prison cell. The idea of being alone in here is enough to make panic fill Chance’s throat, so he sits up, covering his bandaged chest with one arm, and yells, “Wait, _wait_!” He pushes both legs out from under the blankets and almost takes a swan dive onto the floor when the smooth fabric tangles around his feet.  
  
Morgan stares at him from the door, his mouth pulled thin with concern, but he doesn’t turn back.  
  
There are many things Chance could say to persuade Morgan to stay, but most of them probably require a level of familiarity with Morgan that he doesn’t have at the moment. Chance takes a breath, prepared to launch into a reasonably-toned request for some explanations and a bit of company to settle his nerves, but what ends up coming out of his mouth is, “Don’t leave me here alone.”  
  
He almost winces at how young he sounds, and how afraid. When he woke up this morning, he only knew the world directly within sight: the staid hospital beds, the sedate white room, and the bay window overlooking the ocean. Now he has magic, light, and this boy, and he knows, from his core, that he belongs by Morgan’s side.  
  
“Not this time,” Morgan says, and runs.  
  
Chance curses and lurches out of bed, hating himself in the instant before the blanket knots around his legs and sends him crashing in a swaddled lump to the floor. He stays there, thrashing at the blankets, and freezes at the sound of creaking floorboards. Morgan?  
  
He looks up hopefully and winces. Not even remotely Morgan.  
  
It’s a young woman with a thick black ponytail jutting out of her head like a potted plant. “Chance!” She hurries across the room and seizes him under one arm. “What’s going on?” she demands, hauling him upright. “I just saw Morgan run out of here. What did you do?”  
  
Chance lifts a shoulder. “I have no idea,” he says.  
  
“‘No idea,’” she says with a derisive snort. “Real cute. Ugh, you’re one heavy mess.” She shoves him until he stumbles back into bed, then presses down on his chest until he’s flat on his back. “How do the burns feel, you impossible spoiled thing?”  
  
“I have no idea,” he snaps. “Stop touching me.” He squirms out from under her hands.  
  
She glowers at him and gives his face a light smack. “Stay still.”  
  
He stares up at her, shocked. “Did you just slap me?”  
  
“Yeah,” she says. “I bet I’d do it again too. Wanna try your odds?”  
  
He decides it’s safer to stare.  
  
She makes a satisfied sound and runs her fingers gingerly over the folds of bandages that cover his chest and starts to unwrap them deftly. It occurs to him, watching her work, that she hasn’t made eye contact with him since she ran into the room, yet she seems very familiar with him.  
  
Which begs the question:  
  
“What do you mean ‘spoiled’?”  
  
She pauses to give him another smack, this time on his knee, and immediately resumes her work.  
  
His mouth falls open.  
  
Only when she’s gotten the last of the bandages removed does he take a break from his indignant scowling to look down at himself. To his amazement, the burns are almost entirely gone. The only evidence of their existing at all are a few long, angry scars near his stomach.  
  
“You’re all healed up,” she says, tapping him on the nose.  
  
He shakes his head out of her reach and watches warily as her expression shifts into surprise. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks. Her voice is suddenly and significantly less confrontational. Even her spiky ponytail seems to have wilted a little bit.  
  
Reluctant, he says, “I don’t remember anything.”  
  
Her dark eyes search his face, skeptical, but he can see the moment when she believes him. “Nothing?” she asks, lifting one eyebrow. Before he can answer her, she runs her fingers over his scalp. “Did you hit your head when you fell out of bed?”  
  
He ducks sharply away from her. “I _woke up_ like this,” he insists. “I didn’t even know what happened that got me stuck in a hospital. Morgan had to tell me.”  
  
Something odd crosses her face. “Well, you remembered Morgan, though, right?”  
  
He says, “No,” with a quickly-becoming-familiar tendril of guilt. “He had to tell me his name, too.”  
  
She stares at him for a considerably long moment, then stands up. “Wait here,” she says, “I’ll get the doctor.”  
  
As she turns to leave, he imagines handling another new personality and grabs the sleeve of her yukata. “I didn’t hit my head,” he says quickly. “Morgan can tell you. It’s working fine; he was just reading my mind before he left. Go on, you try it.”  
  
She smiles at him, the curl of her lips maddeningly patronizing, and says, “I can’t read your mind, you adorable little brat. Only he can.” She sits on his bed. It occurs to him to push her off, but she seems like the type who’d just get back on. “What were you thinking when he read your mind?”  
  
Something in her expression tells him he wouldn’t normally answer something like that, but he doesn’t see the harm. Since Morgan is gone, she’s his only available source of information now. “I just thought…” He realizes as the words form in his mind that they sound ridiculous. _I thought that I belong with him, and he said, “Not this time,” like I’d spoken out loud to him._ “It doesn’t matter,” he says, ignoring the hot color rising to his face. “Why can he read my mind and other people can’t?”  
  
She leans one hand in the open space on the bed between his calves. “Because,” she says fondly, “you’re spoiled.”  
  
Three different ways of saying, “That doesn’t mean anything to me,” form in his head, but before he can decide on one of them, there’s a long, ugly sound outside the window, like thunder dragged over sandpaper. At once, they look at the window and watch the glass rattle from the force of the sound.  
  
When it stops, the sky lights up in a silver flash.

  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, the sweet sensation of missing a self-imposed deadline.
> 
> It shan't happen again! Probably!
> 
> There's a promise you can trust. ;)

Chance vaults out of bed and hurries to the window. As the light fades from the sky like paint sucked through the back of a canvas, he scans the empty beach. Unfortunately, it’s still too dark to see anything, let alone identify the source of the light or the horrible noise. Chance unlocks the window and pushes on the glass panes until the edges groan and unstick from the window frame.

The young woman joins him and leans far outside to investigate. She seems to have a great deal of faith in the strength of the window frame. “See anything?” she says.

He shakes his head. As his eyes adjust to the darkness and the weak light from the stars, he can make out the grey lines of waves rolling into the shore and the hazy outline of clouds above, but nothing more.

At once, his chest tightens and his throat feels squeezed. He closes his fingers around nothing, wanting the sensation of the thread gripped tightly and securely in his fist.

Somehow, he knows that he shouldn’t be alone right now, and neither should Morgan.

“What direction did Morgan go in?” he asks.

The young woman turns to him, frowning. “Maybe you shouldn’t leave yet,” she says. “I don’t know what you two’ve gotten yourselves into, but he’ll have me hung if I let you out of here only for you to end up back here in an hour with an arm missing. I’ll go look for him, okay?”

Chance glares at her. “Morgan said I feed dragons for fun,” he says, flat. “It sounds like I’m a fairly capable badass.”

“And yet you’ve been in the hospital five times already this year, once to have your leg reattached.” She grabs his arm without preamble and yanks him back to bed. “Lie down. Your body may be healed, but your head clearly still needs time.”

Chance wriggles out of her grasp and blurts, “Things are coming back to me. I’m remembering things.”

She gives him a—deservedly—skeptical look.

“Really!” he insists.

“Okay,” she says, sitting down and leaning on one arm in a slouched way that’s immediately familiar. “I’ll quiz you. I know more embarrassing things about you that even you don’t know, since you talk in your sleep.” A small smile quirks at the corner of her mouth. “You know, this could be fun. How many stitches did it take to reattach your leg last month?”

“Okay, fine, I don’t remember anything,” Chance says, wincing. His stomach gives a morose lurch. “I really lost my _leg_?”

She reaches out and ruffles his hair. “See? Told you you shouldn’t leave. Even if your memory was fine. Maybe even especially then. Clumsy brat.” She gives him a smile with the same curl at the corner of her lips that he saw on Morgan.

The pinch in his chest is getting tighter by the minute.

“Cho-rong!”

The young woman jumps and turns to look over her shoulder. “Grandma?”

Chance cranes his neck just in time to see a tiny woman hurry into the room and grab the doorknob in a white-knuckled fist. “Cho-rong, come on.” She made a sharp gesture and disappeared from the door, reappearing for a moment to say, “Ah, Chance, you’re awake. You too, then. Morgan needs your help.”

When she was gone again, Chance gave the young woman—Cho-rong—a victorious smirk. “ _Grandma_ says I can help,” he says, feeling imperious.

She rolls her eyes and stands up, dragging him up by the collar. “‘Grandma’ isn’t your grandma. We’re not related yet. Stay close to me, understand?”

He nods, resisting to ask about the ‘yet’ part. His attention is now firmly fixed on the outside world. Logic dictates he feel some sense of danger or anxiety, faced with the prospect of leaving behind the only familiar setting he has, but logic doesn’t appear to be a strong leader among the driving influences in his mind. This room is giving him the beginning stages of claustrophobia, he can feel it, and what he wants now more than anything is a wide open beach with the ocean spanning out far beyond the horizon. He leads the way out the door, hungry for fresh air and a panoramic view of something outside the hospital.

“Why do you keep calling me ‘brat’?” he asks.

Cho-rong keeps pace beside him, chuckling. “Sorry, I should be a little nicer to you. Until you have your memories of _being_ a brat, I’ll lay off.” She wraps an arm around his shoulders and rubs his arm. She’s taller than him by a good half a head.

He takes note of some details in the hallway as they pass through it. The floor is scuffed and old and polished to within an inch of its life, and the walls—probably the same age—have undergone similar treatment. The lights lining the ceiling give off a rusty amber glow that makes Chance even hungrier to feel natural light on his face, whether from the sun or the moon, he doesn’t care which.

As they descend the staircase, Chance expects to feel a lingering ache in his chest from burnt skin pulling and stretching, but he must really be healed, because he doesn’t feel a trace of discomfort at all. Fascinated, he lifts an arm and wheels it around, yearning to stretch his bed-ridden muscles—and almost whacks Cho-rong in the face.

She catches his wrist with an indignant sound and shoves him into the stair railing. “I swear,” she says, seemingly to herself, “all these trips to the hospital have done permanent damage to your brain.”

He decides to see that as concern on his behalf and offers her a sheepish smile.

Cho-rong’s grandmother is waiting at the door, and now that Chance can get a longer look at her, he finds himself amazed. She’s a tiny person, hardly eye-level with Morgan’s shoulder, and her long grey hair is swaddled up in thick ropes that spill down her neck, but her posture is upright and proud and her features show off courage that borders on brazen.

She’s also holding a sword about as tall as she is with no visible difficulty.

She hands it to Cho-rong. “I don’t know what he’s up against,” she says to her granddaughter, “but he’s not in the right frame of mind to handle it alone.”

Cho-rong nods, all solemnity and none of her playfulness from mere minutes before. In one clean move, she slides the sword into a beaten leather scabbard over her shoulder that Chance didn’t notice before.

Chance can’t resist it. “Can I have a sword?” he asks, trying a grin.

Cho-rong’s grandmother looks at Chance and frowns. “Where’s yours?”

“He’s not fighting,” Cho-rong says quickly. “He’s lost his memory.”

The old woman’s face changes into disbelief. “Chance?”

He shifts his weight and avoids her eyes. Guilt seeps into him. “Yes, ma’am?”

He can see her recoil from his peripheral vision alone. “‘Ma’am’?” she repeats, stunned.

Cho-rong grabs Chance’s wrist and pulls. “I’ll bring him back safe, Grandma,” she promises. “Both of them.”

Grateful, Chance manages a quick, “Sorry,” to Cho-rong’s grandmother before they take off running around the building in the direction of the beach.

In the darkness, it’s a guessing game where the terrain is level enough to run on. “Why was she surprised?” he asks, stumbling on a tree root.

“Because you’ve been calling her ‘Nana’ since you were seven,” Cho-rong says. “She’s not actually your grandmother, but you’ve never let that stop you.”

She slows down when they reach the end of the grass and waves an arm to call him to her side. The beach rests before them, quiet and empty except for the waves coating the sand with foam. Cho-rong wraps her fingers around the hilt of the sword and slowly draws it out. She holds it in front of her, her features tight.

“Why don’t I get a sword?” he asks again quietly.

“Because I don’t trust your muscle memory enough that you’ll know how to use it without hurting yourself,” she says, her voice pitched even quieter.

“I resent that,” he tells her.

“You _resemble_ that,” she says. “You just hit me in the face.”

“I did not!” he protests. “You caught my arm before I hit you.”

She chooses not to reply to that and instead, takes him by the shoulder. “See the lighthouse?” She points over his shoulder and he follows her line of sight to a dark blue lighthouse sitting at the end of a pier. “Let’s go. We can see more from there.”

Chance takes a breath and is surprised to hear it turning hoarse. The tightness in his chest pulses. 

“Shouldn’t we hurry?” Chance asks.

She tips her head to one side, considering. “If things are this quiet, he’s either incapacitated already or he’s too far away for us to hear, and if that’s the case, we should get to a higher vantage point so we can see where to go.”

He nods and starts to jog in the direction of the lighthouse. He hears the sound of the sword returning to its sheath, and then she’s keeping pace beside him again.

Another question pops into his head. “Is Morgan your brother?”

She turns her head to smile at him. “Half brother. And your—”

He waves his hand at her. “I figured that much out,” he tells her, mostly so he doesn’t have to hear what word she’d use.

The door to the lighthouse is made of wind-worn chunks of wood that groan when Cho-rong yanks on the heavy metal ring. It lurches open, slamming against its hinges, and Cho-rong runs up the stairs without hesitation. Chance drags the door shut, fighting a gust of wind, and then follows her.

Once or twice he almost slips on a step slick with sea water, and he can’t see more than a dim glow around the incessant curve of the spiral staircase. When he can’t hear Cho-rong’s footsteps anymore, he calls her name.

And walks into her back.

“ _Watch_ where you’re going,” she says, irritated.

They’re at the top. Moonlight pools in through the window Cho-rong is stationed at, staring intently into the horizon. “Check the other side,” she says, distracted.

He nods and crosses the small room to the other window. From this height, he can see more than he could at ground level. To his right he can see the bronze city in the distance, now glowing in fuchsias and lilacs. To his left, the ocean. Straight ahead, the coast, stretching into the distance to a fine point.

Chance takes a shallow breath. An ache creeps between his eyes and throbs.

He takes another breath, but it sticks in his throat.

He clenches his fist automatically, shuddering, and stares down in surprise at the red thread laced around his fingers, tangible once more.

Tentative, he tightens his fist on the thread.

He hits the ground, breathless, with his eyes wide open.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my intention was to post every Monday.
> 
> However, I think the concept of "Monday" has heretofore escaped the grasp of my comprehension. Like...it's a day, I know that, and it's a day that happens after one Sunday and before the following Sunday. I don't think I can show much more evidence of my knowing specifically when it is, sadly.
> 
> Further research into what defines "Monday" will continue.
> 
> Until then, here's chapter four. :D

When Morgan was a child, his father told him that their country of Alatia sat upon the elbow of a unicorn god who sleeps beneath the ocean.

Traditionally, unicorns don’t have arms let alone elbows, but official translations must be obeyed. Thus, scores of generations grew up reading picture books that depicted the unicorn god as a deformed yet benevolent-looking creature with the head, hindquarters and tail of a horse, and a pair of white, furry arms that looked more suited to the body of a chimpanzee.

If any unicorns had survived the ancients hunting them into extinction, they would have been mortified by their species’ evolution in the literary world.  


According to the myth, the unicorn god shaped the world over the span of a thousand years, carving the landscape little by little with precise nicks from its silver horn. When it finished, it lay down to rest, but its horn punctured a hole in the ground from which the ocean gushed and flooded the planet. Now, the god lies asleep with only one elbow sticking out of the ocean.

And atop the elbow, the island nation of Alatia.

Intrigued by the unicorn’s transformation from horselike creature into unusual donkey-shaped monkey, Morgan developed an obsession with the myth and spent years teaching himself how to read and write the dead language in which it had been written. When he was fifteen, Morgan discovered that the ancient Alatian symbol for “bowl” bore a close resemblance to the modern pronunciation of “unicorn.” He made this observation to his professor, who responded with a thoughtful smile, and together they looked over a copy of the ancient paper onto which the myth had been scrawled. Sure enough, the symbol that so many translators had confirmed to be the word “unicorn” had one too many strokes and was, in fact, the word “otter.”

While critics squabbled over his correction, Morgan continued poring over the text and discovered more inaccuracies: elbow, for example, once meant “bald head,” and “horn” referred not to any part of a unicorn but actually to the shape of an ancient type of flask. As the corrections piled up, the story that parents and adults had passed on to their children for generations changed entirely and laughably.

Morgan presented his completed work before the scholars who had once mentored his professor. With a clear voice and steady hands, Morgan read from a crisp scroll he had crafted especially for the occasion. “There once was a god who drank a bowl of wine,” he read. “He created the world, couldn’t believe the ugly mess he’d made, cried the oceans into existence, and passed out. Thus, Alatia rests on the hairless head of an intoxicated god in the midst of sleeping it off.” The remainder of his essay focused on linguistics and a slight tangent on his favorite mistranslations throughout history.

A few experts dug in their heels and insisted the original translation was faultless, but the overwhelming majority decided to side with a fifteen-year-old linguistics prodigy instead and made him an overnight celebrity in the academic world.

However, most children’s publishers have yet to follow in the trend and pick up the corrected version.

As most fifteen-year-olds would, Morgan enjoyed his temporary celebrity status. The boost into Alatia’s most respected intellectual circles gave him a number of opportunities, like private guided tours through historical sites closed to the public. He was granted the honor of paying his respects to his ancestors at temples and shrines closed to the public. The crowning glory of it all, however, was the day he was allowed inside one of the country’s oldest and grandest castles.

Morgan wrote about his experience in his very first published article: “In its day, Shingani Castle belonged to a member of the warrior class whose name was erased centuries ago by the deadly combination of improper filing and water damage in the basement of the National Museum. The building has been rebuilt and restored numerous times in its six-hundred-year-long lifespan. One of the most famous incidents in the castle’s history involves the warrior lord’s younger sister who felt he wasn’t a sharp enough leader and led a band of rebels through his bedroom and safely out the front door while he was asleep to prove it. The warrior lord heard their jeering outside in the courtyard and in the ensuing chaos trying to have them all contained, one of the lord’s own guards burned the castle halfway to the ground. It’s been argued by experts that the castle's current incarnation is the closest match yet to its original state.”

He continued on to describe the castle’s sloped roofs and massive black shingles. The walls, once painted a clear shell white, were stained gray by the tag-teaming efforts of age and weather. Inside, a cloak of dust and darkness, to be expected from a castle its age. In the prime of the castle’s life, it had been more important to reduce the odds of projectile weapons finding their way inside than it was to have gaping glass windows that welcomed light and fresh air.

However, the darkness gave this castle a distinctive personality, and Morgan found himself comfortable and embraced by its squashed hallways and low ceilings. As he followed his guides—all of whom had to duck the low beams that his small fifteen-year-old self easily passed under—he decided that he’d have to find a way to come back with Chance. With the place deserted, they’d get to look for long-forgotten corridors and secret passageways. Chance would get himself horribly, blissfully lost and Morgan would photograph and sketch every single speck that caught his eye.

At fifteen years old, Morgan decided that the castle felt like his home from another life.

That sense of comfort was destroyed five years later when he watched Chance nearly die in that same place.

 

≈≈≈≈≈

 

Morgan runs out of the hospital, straight past Cho-rong and their grandmother, out the front door, down the beach, into the woods, and he doesn’t stop until his lungs give a very real threat of exploding inside him. He leans on a tree, the thread fading in and out in his hand, and sucks in one shallow breath after the next.

Chance is going to die.

The thought alone seizes his heart in an iron grip. He’s had Chance by his side since he was seven years old, and he plans to have him stay there forever. Naturally, he thinks of “forever” in a very literal sense. Thanks to a boon in scientific development over the last fifty years, humanity is a hair’s breadth from creating the option of everlasting life, and Morgan will force time backwards with his bare hands if Chance dies before that happens.

He grips the trunk of the oak he’s using for balance and pants until his breath starts to even out. He can’t see the thread, but he can feel fragments of it if he searches the air around him long enough. When he’s gotten himself under control, he finds a tiny bit of it, invisible but tangible, and holds it tightly. When Morgan was seven, it appeared for the first time and he followed it for hours, alone and unconcerned, until he found the other end of it wrapped around the finger of a boy his age with wide eyes and a pair of scissors working uselessly to cut the thread.

Scientists call it “the candisometric link.” Romantics call it the “string of destiny.” Morgan calls it “the most useless form of magic in the world.”

All it’s ever done before now is let them read each other’s minds, and that, in Morgan’s opinion, is something that would have occurred naturally with enough time. Chance isn’t a difficult person to read, and Morgan has no love of deception. They might not have developed actual telepathy, but something close to it. If he could trade, he’d ask for something like his uncle’s telekinesis or the Prince of Alatia’s ability to fly. Detectable magic is rare enough already, and to complain about having any form of it is tantamount to complaining about that mound of gold taking up space in your vault, but Morgan holds firm in his belief that a thread is unforgivably lame.

He will admit, when he’s in the right mood, that it gave him and Chance years of entertainment when they were younger. They’d hold entire conversations in public without making a sound, frowning and smiling at randomized intervals and giving every person around them a profound feeling of discomfort. As they got older, they lost the knack for speaking telepathically in coherent sentences and gradually shifted to abstract imagery instead. That, however, cost them as their thoughts slowly began to fuse together into a chaotic, contradictory jumble, leaving Chance infuriated by his lack of control and Morgan petrified for his own sanity. With some guidance from Morgan’s grandmother, who studied remedial meditation techniques as a young woman, they made a more concentrated effort to keep the deeper levels of their thoughts separate. Now that they’re twenty, the excitement and wonder have both passed and now the most they can say to people about the thread is that it’s made them lazy about talking to each other. (Which, Morgan is always quick to add, _also_ would have occurred naturally after enough time together.)

It also kind of ruined the romance of Morgan telling Chance he loved him when they were seventeen.

Chance had given him a level stare that bordered on comically indignant.

“You’re either reminding me of that,” he’d said slowly, “or you haven’t realized we’ve been dating since we were fifteen. And if that’s true, I feel very weird about the innuendo I’ve been using for the last two years.” Thus, they’re a little shaky on the exact length of their relationship. Whenever Morgan sits down to puzzle it out, Chance has contributed to the conversation with a confident, “Seven years old,” and exits whatever space they’re in with a content smile.

Losing him isn’t even a realistic _suggestion_. With one last long breath, Morgan pushes off the tree and takes off into a sprint.

For thirteen years, the thread was just a thread that gave them a lazier form of communicating. Then, last night, it burned around Morgan’s finger, jolting him awake. The knot shifted in a slow circle, the slack lifting off the floor and wrapping in coils around his finger again and again. As Morgan flexed his hand and watched the thread finally pull itself taut, a streak of pain shot through him, so intense he almost blacked out.

He’d reached blindly beside him for Chance, but Chance was gone.

He tears between the trees through piles of shredded autumn leaves. He’s out of breath again, each drag of air into his lungs a painful one, but he can’t stop again. The memory of Chance staring at him without a hint of recognition lodges itself firmly at the forefront of his mind, right next to the image of Chance pinching the thread and unknowingly calling thick swaths of shadows to fill the room.

Things are changing too fast. Two days ago, the thread was just a boring piece of magic. Now, it’s acting like some kind of sentient being.

After it filled him with pain, the thread pulled him. It coiled around his finger as he cautiously got out of bed, drawn tight like the string of a bow. He threw on a sweater, gave their empty bed one final frown, and allowed the thread to lead him to wherever Chance had gone.

He found Chance lying in the garden of Shingani Castle under the open jaws of a dragon taking a deep breath with a clear intention to incinerate him. As Morgan ran at the dragon, unarmed and half-crazy with fear, another stab of pain lanced through him. A woman winked into existence, bent over Chance and clasping their thread in her hand.

The memory of it spurs Morgan on faster. He makes a horrible sound, his lungs seared white-hot from exertion, and pushes himself up the mountain trail. He can see the castle walls silhouetted against the cloudy, moonlit sky, half-crumbled after the dragon’s assault last night.

The woman had given Morgan a startled, narrow look, holding their thread before her as if it were the algae-smothered rope of a fishing boat, not something infinitely more precious.

Morgan’s instinct then matches the instinct he has now. Climbing over the newly chained gate, Morgan runs pellmell into the garden, vaulting over scorched wedges of wood from the castle walls. He takes the front stairs three at a time and shoves through the slightly parted, enormously heavy wooden doors.

And there she is.

Death.


End file.
